


The Morning After

by thedevilchicken



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Drugged Sex, Dubious Science, F/M, First Time, Mildly Dubious Consent, Rule 63, Sex Pollen, rule 63 Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-09-28 03:26:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20419124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Tony runs into a slight issue with an illegally traded Wakandan herb at a corporate party. Peter unexpectedly comes to her rescue.(Rule 63 Tony Stark)





	The Morning After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [timbre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timbre/gifts).

Over the years, Tony's found the morning after the night before can be, well. Kinda awkward. 

That's not why she quit it most of the way with the super-frequent one night stands (okay, so sometimes it's two nights if her stamina's riding real high, though these days it's rarely ever more than that), but the increased absence of morning-after awkwardness is a side effect she can't say she's not glad for. After all, it's been a while now since she had Pepper around to give her erstwhile paramours the inevitable early-morning Tonypology and honestly, now she's (usually kinda mostly pretty close to) sober, since the whole Iron Man thing and the surrounding utterly predictable fallout, putting Happy on it's-not-you-it's-her duty would just feel kinda sad. These days, she's taken to having F.R.I.D.A.Y. explain it to them and then show them out with some fancy-ass flashing wall panels she'd never admit she basically ripped off from Star Trek; it can all take place while she's safely ensconced in the workshop downstairs, so she only ever sees their irritation in the gossip columns. Pepper emails the best-worst ones to her with a single frowny face emoji, like that's going to keep her from backsliding every once in a while. It really, really doesn't, but she appreciates Pep's general sense of concern.

The fact is, however: until last night, she'd been ill-advised-sex-free (thus disapproving-emoji-free) for a number of months. Admittedly that number is greater than one but less than six, and she's only really been free of the kind of sex that requires the participation of a partner. And maybe it's not actually been on purpose because hey, she still likes sex a whole lot and that shows no signs of stopping, but look, so she's been busy. She's had forms to sign and she's had suits to upgrade and she's had shit on her mind, like how her mentor turned out just a little bit evil or how a truly weird number of people seem to want her dead, or saving the planet from going full-on fricking Independence Day. And besides, last night wasn't exactly on purpose, either. It's not like she went out looking for a date. It's not like she meant it to happen.

It wasn't on purpose. Tony Stark is forty-eight years old and right now, sneaking out of bed at oh-dark-thirty, she feels every single one of those years. It wasn't on purpose and maybe that's why this time just feels bad instead of awkward. It's not just some girl or some guy or some orgiastic variety pack of genders that she picked up someplace cool and brought home for the drunken funsies. It's not some guy or girl or goddamn multiplicity of both whose name(s) she won't remember because she's not sure she ever caught them in the first place. She wasn't drunk. Not technically. She knows exactly who it was. Who it _is_.

She sneaks out of the room and leaves Peter Parker sleeping in her bed. 

She is absolutely going to regret this. 

\---

It was a night like so many others: Tony had gotten an invite to some fancy party the company was throwing and while she lacked the requisite enthusiasm to really enjoy herself, Pepper had frowny-face-emojied and told her she should at least show her face. Because Pepper generally knows best (and sure, maybe because she was getting nowhere fast in the workshop, and maybe because fresh air and the company of people were things she needed to get on a slightly more regular basis), she pulled on a suit, smudged on some eyeliner, gave her short hair a seemingly-carefree rumple she's gotten down to an art over the years, and had Happy pull the car around. Showing up in the armor just seemed like the wrong kind of showing off for the occasion. Particularly when she was so damn frustrated with the (lack of) progress she was making on the new suit upgrade.

The guy she met at the bar after all the meeting and greeting was over absolutely did not know when to shut the fuck up. The guy she met at the bar also had no goddamn sense of decorum because one second she was sipping her scotch (free, though Pepper could probably tell her how much it cost the company) and the next second she was watching him get his chatty ass hauled out of there by two large Wakandan diplomats. She'd say she used the term loosely but in her experience, half the "diplomats" in the country are goons with guns international immunity. The word seemed to cover it nicely.

Then the King of Wakanda's kid sister appeared as if from nowhere (heck, maybe they'd developed tech that could make them as invisible as it turned out their country was) and then - _then_ \- things really took a turn for the weird. 

"Did you drink this?" Shuri asked. 

"Did I drink what?" Tony replied. Shuri lifted up Tony's hand with the scotch glass still in it. Tony gave the rim of a glass a quick musical ping with one slightly motor-oily fingernail. "Oh, _that_. Sure. Sure, I drank that."

Shuri sighed. "You will wish you hadn't," she said.

"You want to tell me why?"

"Come with me." She gestured at the door, which Tony had to admit had been looking pretty appealing even before she'd made her entrance. "Let me take you home. I will explain along the way." 

Tony got into Shuri's car (Happy was probably gonna be real, uh, _happy_ about that), in the back seat while one of the diplomatic goons drove, and true to her word she explained along the way. Turned out Tony had been dosed with something in the not-actually-great scotch, something the Wakandans had been tracking, some kind of herb they didn't like to let outside their borders. And, as they wound their way back to the tower, Tony started to get it: her temperature steadily climbed, and her brain turned kinda half-foggy, and the Black Panther's kitty-cat sister started to look real interesting indeed. That was new. That was _really_> new, and kinda disconcerting; Shuri was cute, sure, but not like that. Mostly Tony just liked arguing science with her. Not like she needed the balls-out proof of what she'd been told, 'cause hell if she could think of a single reason Shuri would lie to her about it, but there it was if ever she felt it.

"Sex pollen," Tony said, abruptly, once they'd gotten out of the car and into the Stark Tower elevator. She leaned back against the wall and dragged her hands over her face. "I just drank sex pollen." 

Shuri took a second to mull that over, tapping her fingertips against her mouth in a way that made Tony roll her eyes at her own overhyped libido. Shuri shrugged. "More like sex _juice_," she replied. 

"Sure, but that makes it sound more like some home shopping network flimflam, princess, not Wakandan viagra." 

"We use it in bonding rituals, Ms. Stark, not for happy hour." The goons ditched Tony on the couch. "I assure you, the perpetrator will be dealt with. And you should..."

"...go get some beauty sleep before I start humping the table leg?"

"You should call someone you trust. Or be prepared for several unpleasant weeks alone."

Tony frowned. "So it won't kill me?" she asked.

Shut smiled so tightly it looked like a grimace. Or maybe really was a grimace. Either way, Tony got it without any further explanation: the stupid Wakandan cock-shaped herb or whatever the fuck it was wouldn't kill her, but if she didn't find a way to shrug it off... well, she'd probably kinda wish it _had_ killed her. 

"Let me send you the data," Shuri said. Then she headed for the door. She sent the data as she went. Tony read the data. And she came to one inevitable conclusion. 

The first few hours weren't so bad. She threw the data up on the board and started sorting through it; it wasn't that she didn't trust centuries of Wakandan scientists - frankly, she trusted Shuri almost more than the average Nobel laureate - but she for damn sure wasn't going to lie down and let the overwhelming urge to fornicate take her without running the numbers herself. She took a blood sample with DUM-E's usual inexpert, inimitable assistance (okay, so maybe a little human intervention was what it really needed, but she really couldn't afford that luxury at that exact moment). The tests she ran matched what she'd seen in Shuri's data. She wasn't surprised, but sitting at the workbench with the fingers of both hands messing up her carefully carelessly styled hair, she didn't feel a whole lot of satisfaction in that.

She thought about scrubbing the pollen - juice, whatever - from her blood completely, but the preliminary experiments she ran over the next few hours, into the next early morning, proved that just wasn't gonna happen. There was no time for an antidote and hell, the Wakandans had never found one and they'd been using the stuff for a really, _really_ long time. And honestly, her head was getting fuzzier, almost like she'd gotten through half a bottle of the actually good scotch she kept in the penthouse where no thirsty Avengers were likely to lay hands on it and not just half a glass of Wakandan Fly some jackass had probably bought on the internet. She gave Shuri a call around 5am to check no one else had gotten dosed and she said no, they'd all that was missing. Then Tony lay down on the lab floor in her sweats and t-shirt while Shuri hung up, and wondered what in the blue blazes she was gonna do.

Of course, the fact was Tony wasn't going to die from sex pollen; she was just gonna feel a little like she had until she found someone with whom to get her rocks off. It wasn't even the worst thing that had ever happened to her - not that _not the worst thing_ exactly meant _good_. From what she'd seen in the literature, things were gonna get uncomfortable, and distracting, and So she considered the list: Pep would probably do it, she figured, but damn if that wasn't a bell she couldn't unring. Steve would take it like some kind of solemn duty. Bruce, maybe, except for the whole thing where you wouldn't like him when he's horny. She started ticking off the names on her fingers: old boyfriends, old girlfriends, though she was pretty sure they'd mostly vote to let her suffer. She thought about calling a professional, but she could just imagine Pep's frowny-face emojis. She absolutely didn't think about calling her nineteen-year-old mentee who was probably off doing whatever the hell nineteen-year-old college students did these days, putt-putt or base-jumping or maybe just his physics homework, all of which was definitely not fucking their sex pollened benefactor. So she sighed and she rubbed her eyes, cursed a blue streak till F.R.I.D.A.Y. suggested she put a couple of bucks in the Avengers' swear jar, and then called Rhodey. 

Rhodey said, "Is this a joke? 'Cause I don't feel like being fucked around with right now, Tony." 

"We can fuck around after we've, y'know, _fucked_," Tony replied, still lying on the floor like floor-lying was somehow the new normal. "Are you telling me Mr. Patriotism won't take one for the team?" And Rhodey sighed. He said yes, because a) Mr. Patriotism would _always_ take one for the team, and b) it probably wasn't even the fourth weirdest thing Rhodey had heard that week. Honestly, it wasn't even the fourth weirdest thing Tony had ever suggested they do together. And he was way the hell over on the other side of the country, but he said he'd get over there as fast as his modified Iron Man armor would carry him. Which was pretty fast. Tony figured it had to be worth an upgrade, at least. 

It was going to be fine, Tony told herself. It was going to be fine, and so she bounced all around the damn lab reading and re-reading the stuff Shuri had casually emailed over, like biology was her specialism and not pretty much anything but. It was going to be fine, she thought, as the hours passed and she paced and she dug her blunt fingernails into her palms and tried to think unsexy thoughts to keep her mind off the fact she kinda felt like she wanted to crawl straight out of her skin. She sat on a worktop and kicked her heels against the metal cupboard doors and tried not to think about the way her clit was throbbing because she was pretty sure that if she started down that road, she was going to wind up with an aching hand and not much else to show for it. The herb needed her to find a partner to neutralize it (she guessed that was why the Wakandan's used it in rituals); it was all something something biology, and at one point she'd understood it but by mid-morning understanding seemed pretty far away.

She told herself it was going to be fine, even when she resorted to chess with DUM-E to pass the time till Rhodey arrived. And it might even have actually been fine, too, if the door to the lab hadn't opened and Peter hadn't walked right in. 

"Oh, hey, Ms. Stark," he said, breaking into his usual bright, pleased-to-see-you smile. "I thought you said you'd be out for the weekend. I can leave if you..." He flapped his hands in the air to finish the sentence and caught his book bag as it slipped off of one shoulder. Tony's chest clenched. Something else clenched, too.

"No, hey, stay," Tony replied. She hopped down from the bench and almost tripped over her own damn feet. Her face felt hot. Her hands felt restless. She tried really, really hard not to look at him. "I'll head upstairs. Have the place to yourself. Go nuts." 

She made her way unsteadily toward the door, her head swimming with all her possible next moves in her eighth consecutive game of bot-opposed chess (she was gonna have to give DUM-E a serious education except maybe, just maybe, that kinda wasn't the important point right then), her entire body throbbing. And Peter watched her go, frowning at her as she went. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

"Everything's just fine, Pete," Tony replied, with an unconvincing smile and a glance in his direction that she immediately regretted. He looked so damn concerned.

"It doesn't _look_ fine." 

Tony paused by the door. She put her hands on her hips. "Are you telling me I don't look fine to you?" she asked, shooting for lighthearted and missing the mark by a mile. Peter grimaced. Peter smiled. Peter..._smimaced_? Peter _griled_? Tony sighed. She ran her hands through her hair. Maybe that had been the wrong question, given she looked like she'd gone six rounds with Ultron and even so, Peter would probably have said she absolutely did look _fine_. "Okay, sure, things aren't fine. But they'll be fine soon, kid. I'll be myself again in no time. Nothing to worry about." She raised one hand and wiggled a finger. "Seriously. Pinky swear."

Honestly, she thought she played it pretty well, all things considered. She sounded a whole lot more convincing than she felt, because she felt like a horny building had topped over on top of her her, stolen half her energy and replaced the other half with the desire to go fix her armor upgrade issues by attaching a red and gold dick and having it bend her over the nearest worktop. It actually wouldn't've been so hard, she thought, considering some of the other shit she'd made it do, but she was pretty sure the herb floating about in her blood wasn't about to register ten inches of metal as a _partner_.

Peter cleared his throat. Tony looked at him. "Can I help?" he asked, the look on his face so earnest it kinda made her chest hurt.

Tony stared at him. She didn't mean to, but the problem was she knew exactly what "help" meant in context even if Peter didn't and suddenly that was right there in her head, Peter helping her, Peter..._helping_ her, with his hands and his mouth and the length of his dick that really, Tony had no business thinking about at all in any context. And it wasn't like her brain had never taken her that way before because okay, yeah, she'd noticed the way he'd gotten a little taller since he left high school, and she'd noticed how he'd gotten a little broader through the shoulders, a little bulkier, till she had to slip on a pair of cushy nanotech-enhanced heels to stay even a little taller than him. She'd noticed the definition of muscle that the suit she'd made him clung to. She'd noticed how he looked at her like she'd hung the fricking moon, no matter what stupid shit she'd pulled. It was sexy to be wanted. Of course, the fact she wanted him to want her was a problem all by itself.

"No," she said. Firmly. At least she went for firmly. She totally failed to hit firmly. 

Peter frowned. "Ms. Stark?"

"I'm just waiting for Rhodey." She looked away, into the air, like somehow she could see her formless AI if she just looked hard enough, or at least looked hard enough away from Peter in his slightly too big jeans and shirt. It was like he was always hiding, or like he was always waiting for the next growth spurt even though Tony was pretty sure no more were coming, and over the years she'd had to rein in the urge to send him pairs of jeans with a more flattering cut and form-fitting shirts that would show off his physique. She'd stopped herself, but it wasn't because she'd thought he wouldn't wear them; she'd been sort of concerned that he would. "F.R.I., ETA on on Colonel Rhodes?"

"Colonel Rhodes received orders to divert to the south pacific for search and rescue. E.T.A. unknown."

Tony groaned. Tony slumped against the doorframe and rubbed her face with both her hands. And maybe it would've been easier to tell herself no if the kid hadn't been looking at her that way he always did, wide-eyed and like he'd do absolutely anything for her if only he knew what she wanted, if only she'd just ask. Maybe it would've been easier to walk out if he hadn't smiled and said, "Does it need to be Colonel Rhodes or is there something I can do instead?" or, "I mean, I'm here already. Kinda seems like a waste of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man." 

Tony laughed. She broke into helpless laughter, thinking just how _friendly_ she wanted him to get. To her credit, mid-hysterics was when Tony clued him into what was going on; at least, she threw Shuri's data back up on the screen and let him draw his own conclusions while she slumped melodramatically in the nearest chair, sitting on her hands just in case she found herself unduly tempted. Or it would've been melodramatic if she hadn't been pretty sure she was making a huge mistake just even staying in the room. Jeez, watching him make sense of it was sexy as hell. She was so far gone she wasn't even sure that was the pollen talking.

"So you were going to have sex with Colonel Rhodes," Peter said, carefully, as he was still scrolling through the more obscure parts.

Tony nodded into her hands. "Yeah. I mean, you see why it can't be you." 

Peter frowned. "No, I really don't," he replied. "I mean, unless you prefer feeling like this to seeing me that way? I'd understand, I guess. You're--" He flapped his hands in her direction. "Well, you're _you_. You're Iron Man. You save the world!" He smiled wryly. "And I'm me. I save people's lunch money."

Tony laughed. "Kid, seeing you that way was never the problem," she said.

Peter's eyes went just a little wide, but what he said was, "Then what is?"

She didn't say, _you're nineteen years old and your aunt might actually flay the skin from my bones if she ever found out_. She didn't say, _I wouldn't blame her if she did_, or _I have a history of fucking up everything good in my life, kid, and this is maybe something I really want to keep._ She didn't say she'd tried hooking up with guys her own age but they were all so goddamn serious or else stuck firmly mid-midlife crisis, complete with the shiny red sports car and sad attraction to vastly younger women. Maybe that was why she was into him, she thought. That or because the ones who weren't dating her for access to her cashflow always got invested in some kind of intellectual dick-measuring contest they were basically doomed to lose; the only time she wasn't pretty sure she was the smartest one in the room was maybe when Bruce was there, provided he wasn't currently the color of an appletini if not nearly so sweet. Or Shuri, maybe; she was definitely up there with the best and brightest. Maybe the foul-mouthed raccoon with the 'tude, too, not that Tony was about to admit it. Or sometimes, just sometimes, when Peter looked at what she was doing and said something that made her frown and go _huh_ and rethink everything she'd done for the past three days. The kid's wicked smart and looks at her like he believes together, nothing is impossible. She's always known she'd have her hands full. 

She didn't say any of that. What she said was, "Wow, this is such a huge mistake." Then she peeled off her ratty old band tee she was pretty sure was older than he was and Peter's eyes went pretty comically wide given how she was still wearing a bra - not even a sexy one, just some sporty black number she threw on when she needed her tits under control. And she'd've said something about the way he looked at her right then, maybe, but words were kinda failing her. Thought was, too. All good sense and good judgment, likewise out the window and sprawled on the sidewalk twenty storeys down. She knew she shouldn't. She _knew_ she shouldn't, but that knowledge was somewhere buried deep in the back of her mind with facts about the duck-billed platypus from some shitty documentary she watched once after a highly unsuccessful orgy and an underwhelming ability to list all the state capitals in reverse alphabetical order.

Then she bent over the counter and shoved down her sweats to mid-thigh and she absolutely didn't wish it had gone any of a hundred other ways than this, except she knew she wasn't going to think a single regular thought till this was over. So Peter pushed his shirt up underneath his arms and pushed his jeans over his hips down to his knees and Tony rested her forehead down against the metal bench as she felt him rub his fingertips in between her thighs, over her underwear. She felt his fingers tuck in underneath the fabric, the backs of them brushing against her slit. Jeez, he was almost shaking, and she _was_ shaking, she was gripping the far edge of the worktop so damn hard. 

Peter pulled down her underwear and she heard him curse under his breath as he trailed his fingers between her thighs. She felt him tease just the very tip of one between her folds, following the wet fricking line from her clit to her cunt. She felt him rub the tip of his dick there, and when she turned her head she could _see_ him rub his dick there, in their reflections in the stupid impractical glass-panelled wall. He'd given up and pulled off his shirt though his jeans were still caught up by his knees and she could see the length of him, hard and maybe surprisingly thick, as he used one hand to rub the tip against her. And okay, so she'd imagined fucking him, but she'd only ever _imagined_ \- God, she'd imagined him being so awkwardly grateful. But she felt him push inside her, opening her up with the length of his cock. She heard him groan. She heard herself. _She_ was grateful.

Peter fucked her. He gripped her hips in the start but then his hands started to wander and Tony loved it, every second of it, every thrust of his dick inside her, deep enough to make her ache in absolutely the right way. She pushed him back, maybe too hard or maybe he just overbalanced with his jeans around his knees and he wound up cursing on the floor until she pulled off her sweats and her underwear and straddled his hips and rode him, one hand around his dick till she got it pushed back up inside her. Peter's eyes were wide as he watched her, as she rocked her hips and felt her knees start to groan and ran her hands over his ridiculous abs up to his chest and then his shoulders. She rolled her hips and groaned out loud and so did Peter, pushing up against her. Then he tipped her down onto her back, unexpected but hey, what the hell, and she got her legs cinched tight around his waist as he fucked her, harder, braced above her. Jesus, he was something. She tangled her fingers in his hair and it only stopped him for a moment when she kissed him. She absolutely couldn't help herself, or at least that was what made sense. She could've kissed him for days. It kinda felt like she did.

In the end, Peter fumbled his way out of her and came over her stomach, blushing like he was embarrassed to enjoy himself like that. Tony wasn't totally sure if she'd never come at all or come like, six times. And she wiped herself off on her shirt - she was pretty sure it'd seen worse in its day - and played with Peter's sweaty hair till she had the wherewithal to drag herself up off of the workshop floor. Peter went with her.

Somehow, after, they wound up in bed; she remembers taking Peter's hand and leading him there, and making out awkwardly in the elevator along the way. Somehow, against her better judgment, she fell asleep; Peter was still there, so damn full of hope. 

Rhodey would've been safer. She's always known what Peter wants from her. She knows what she wants from him. It should stop at one night, just a favor, just a rescue. She can act like it never happened until maybe they'll convince themselves it never did.

Now, she sneaks back out.

\---

"Hey," Peter says in the room behind her back, his voice kinda croaky from sleep. Tony grimaces and turns back around to face him; she frowns, so Peter frowns. "You're leaving?"

Tony runs both hands over her sleep-rumpled hair. She shrugs. "I guess?" she says.

"You guess? You don't know?"

"Yeah, I'm leaving." She leans against the doorframe in her PJs; somehow, looking at her from the bed, Peter manages to look both hurt and adoring, and maybe also borderline adorable, his hair sticking up every which way. He's so young and in a lot of ways naive and jeez, she hates herself for doing this. Fuck's sake, she's got a problem. "Look, I don't deal well with morning afters." 

"That's what this is? Just the morning after?"

"I don't want you to have regrets." 

Peter sighs. He slips out of bed, only partly self-conscious that he's being seen in just his boxer shorts, never mind she's seen him in less. Way less, if that's even possible. She's seen him stripped down to his skin right there in her bed, pleading with her; okay, so maybe they woke up a couple of times. Maybe obscure Wakandan flora has a lot to answer for. 

"The only thing I regret is somehow you don't know I don't regret this."

"Okay, look. F.R.I.D.A.Y., tell Peter I'm sorry. And there's waffles in the kitchen. Probably. I'm not sure I know where those come from. F.R.I.D.A.Y., if there's no waffles in the kitchen, can we get right on that?" 

Peter sighs. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., please tell Ms. Stark she's the dumbest genius I know." 

"Aren't I the only genius you know?"

Peter shrugs. He gets a little closer. "Didn't you go to MIT with Colonel Rhodes?"

"That just makes him smarter than the average Air Force, kid, not a bonafide genius." 

"So how about Dr. Strange?" he says.

"He used to be a surgeon and now he's fricking Dumbledore," Tony replies. "I'm pretty sure he just _thinks_ he's a genius."

"Then Dr. Banner." He gets closer still. Cautious. Like he expects Tony to flee, like she's a skittish cat and not a grown woman twice his age. More than. Jesus.

"Okay, sure, I'll give you that. When he's not kinda verdant and pissed." 

Peter smiles. He raises his brows. When he raises one hand to the scar at her chest, to the top edge that's peeking out over her tank top, when he traces the line of where the arc reactor used to be with the tips of his fingers, and then leans in, and then presses his mouth there...it's like he's asking twenty questions all at once without even saying a single word. Tony's frankly surprised to find her answer to each and every one of them is _yes_.

"Come back to bed?" Peter says. So she does. Jeez, she doesn't take a whole lot of persuasion.

And all she can think is the morning after the night before's maybe not quite so bad after all.


End file.
